AdamGoldMiner
New Member
Greetings, I'm a noob to the forum and would love if some of you more experienced folks would help me think through this situation:
Our home that we purchased last summer has a spring as its water source. During testing the spring maintained 5gpm for about 30 minutes before slowing and then leveling off at 1.5 gpm for 4 hours. After living in the home we've had plenty of water except for times like the following: We got home from camping, washed both cars and the trailer, ran two loads of laundry and then everyone (2 adults 2 children) started trying to take showers...showers didn't work...trickle spurt, etc.
The spring itself is only a few feet deep with a 3 foot diameter culvert for a wall, with a pump house built on top. I'd like to install a storage tank (I'm thinking 750 gallon) next to the spring house to hold a reasonable amount of water to be filled by the spring before being pumped into pressure tank, then up to the house. I'm thinking to use a KARI float switch in the tank to control when water is pumped from the spring.
The spring produces plenty of water for normal, ordinary daily use, it's those extreme high-use conditions that cause the lack of water.
My questions: Is 750gal tank enough (I estimate that's 2 days storage)? Not enough?
Since the current well pump is for the spring could I use it to pump water from the tank to the house, and replace it with a new pump from the spring into the tank? In that case, what kind of pump?
Should I use a float in the spring to turn off that pump if the water gets too low, or some kind of a cavitation sensor to shut off the pump if it sucks air? What's the best way to deal with that?
Any input would be appreciated.
Our home that we purchased last summer has a spring as its water source. During testing the spring maintained 5gpm for about 30 minutes before slowing and then leveling off at 1.5 gpm for 4 hours. After living in the home we've had plenty of water except for times like the following: We got home from camping, washed both cars and the trailer, ran two loads of laundry and then everyone (2 adults 2 children) started trying to take showers...showers didn't work...trickle spurt, etc.
The spring itself is only a few feet deep with a 3 foot diameter culvert for a wall, with a pump house built on top. I'd like to install a storage tank (I'm thinking 750 gallon) next to the spring house to hold a reasonable amount of water to be filled by the spring before being pumped into pressure tank, then up to the house. I'm thinking to use a KARI float switch in the tank to control when water is pumped from the spring.
The spring produces plenty of water for normal, ordinary daily use, it's those extreme high-use conditions that cause the lack of water.
My questions: Is 750gal tank enough (I estimate that's 2 days storage)? Not enough?
Since the current well pump is for the spring could I use it to pump water from the tank to the house, and replace it with a new pump from the spring into the tank? In that case, what kind of pump?
Should I use a float in the spring to turn off that pump if the water gets too low, or some kind of a cavitation sensor to shut off the pump if it sucks air? What's the best way to deal with that?
Any input would be appreciated.